A Leaf Falls
A new short story by Aaron Geer
The rain plummeted to the ground disastrously that day, and it sank like lead into my clothes, shoes, and hairs. I had forgotten to pack my umbrella when I moved out of Riley’s apartment so I was an open target to the rain. I should’ve packed it, I thought, I should’ve remembered. I could easily picture my umbrella in the foyer leaning against the coat rack. Along with all the other miscellaneous outdoor items, the umbrella would be snuggling near the register to keep warm and dry.
Grandpa Williams had given me the umbrella before my departure to Kalamazoo.
“Take this,” he said while I was giving my goodbyes and see-you-soons to Aunts, Uncles, and other members of my immediate family, “you’ll need this when you get out there. Now, just help me up.” He grabbed my arm and started to lift himself off of the chair. Because of consistent hip problems, including four replacements, Grandpa Williams had nearly been immobile for the last year of his life.
“Grandpa,” I said while he grabbed my other arm for support. Trying to find the right words to say to a man who can barely lift his legs without pain and trying to find the right words to say to your grandfather who can barely lift his legs without pain are two totally different scenarios, and I didn’t want to be a part of either of them.
His grip tightened on my forearms. “Come on and help me out here, Mike,” he said, “I know they say I can’t, but I know I can.” He was referring to my mother and her two sisters, who, at their age, felt it their duty to make sure that Grandpa would be in as little pain as possible. “When you’re stuck in this chair all day you miss the feeling of carpet, the cold wood floor in the morning, the stiffness of the bones when you lay down.” His grip weakened and he sat back to his chair. “I’ve been sitting in this chair for so long that the only memories I am starting to have are in it.” He looked to me, “Now you name me how many lasting memories you can have sitting down?” I could see emotion from a man who hid not only feelings, but his bare legs to the world (“I’ve never seen his shins,” Aunt P said while we were laying by the pool, while Grandpa assiduously sat in the shade drinking Manhattans).
I looked to my left and out towards the front yard. The rest of the family was watching the little ones run around, or in the basement playing Euchre. To justify his sudden burst of life, I asked where he would need to go.
“It’s in the bureau of the guest room.” It’s not that far, I thought. “It’s not that far, Bud, trust me.” He took the grip again.
I took his arm across my shoulders and stood him up.
“Heavier than you thought I would be, eh?” He smiled.
“You could be worse,” I said, readjusting his armpit on my shoulder, “or I could be younger – either, or.”
He let out a laugh so rich it was like finding El Dorado.
When we finally got to the guest room after taking a break every three steps of fascinated pain, he held out the umbrella. “I know it’s not a lot, but the rain sure can come down there,” he handed me the umbrella with its worn navy blue covering cloth, and smooth handle. “I’ve had this for thirty years, and if you ask me,” he said, “I think it could have another thirty years of work in her.” I should go back, I thought. The rain came down sweeping sideways slapping me in the face as if in disapproval. I stood against the immense brick pile that was Riley’s apartment building – holding two backpacks of material. I had all of the possessions that were at Riley’s: a small assortment of novels, a few dozen Cds, The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, Miles Davis’ Bitches Brew, Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks, Talking Heads’ 1977, a collection of clothes that had compiled over the months, and, two collections of E.E. Cummings poetry.
We had met each other in costume at a Halloween party.
I knew only one person, Brian, the host, and classmate of mine in a writing workshop. He had invited me a week prior, and I had memorized the date, address, and time of the party while he was telling me. I wanted so desperately to take out a notebook and exchange our numbers so I could R.S.V.P. but I felt it unnatural, and quite socially awkward.
“It’s critical to meet friends when you move to a big city,” my mother said to me before I left for the airport, “just think how many girls are there that could be the one.” Her words were etched in my brain for the next two weeks.
I arrived to Brian’s house a half hour later than the time he said to arrive. By then, I thought, enough people would be there for me to feel comfortable - in a crowd it is less likely to be seen alone.
I walked up to the door, knocked. I peaked in through the glass on the door and could see no one. After waiting on the porch for a few minutes a car pulled in the driveway.
“Michael?” asked Brian from the backseat of an SUV. I felt nothing but the feeling to run.
The host of the party is here after me.
I arrived before the host of the party.
I must seem like a kid on Christmas Eve.
“Where’s your costume, man?” he asked me while he held a hat in the air. He stepped out of the SUV looking like Indiana Jones. Three others stepped out of the car: Shaggy from Scooby Doo, a ninja, and George Washington. They walked towards the porch. It seemed as if a gang from my second-grade-television-and-movie-conscience were about to hurl me off their porch, sending me screeching on the pavement.
“You didn’t tell him it was a costume party, dumb ass?” said the ninja, interestingly tearing out nunchucks from a box he purchased at Toys ‘R Us.
“The main reason we are having this party is because of the costumes, Brian,” said Shaggy, imitating the ista-stoned, peach fuzzed nuisance to the best of his ability, but failed miserably, sounding more similar to a pre-pubescent Barry White who is trying to then imitate Spacoli. “How are we supposed to have a Halloween party if people don’t know whether to dress up or not?” He coughed, walking past me into the house.
“Yeah, man,” said George Washington, trying to light a cigarette.
“I forgot to tell him,” said Brian, holding his whip in one hand, acting ready to strike if the ninja were to attack suddenly, if Shaggy were to reveal his true identity, or if George Washington were to bombard suddenly.
George Washington stood mutely, smoking his cigarette, while I miserably rested myself against the porch railing.
Brian looked to me and apologized. I accepted the fact, and walked towards the sidewalk. “But come back,” he said to me as he was opening the front door, “in an hour or so.”
I arrived back to Brian’s two hours later. I had grabbed whatever I had in my apartment to make a costume, or something to resemble one. I didn’t have much, so when the party-goers asked me who I was supposed to be I would answer: “A man in a suit with an umbrella.”
The whole house seemed to be stuffed with drunkenness when I arrived. The vibes in the kitchen, basement, and attic were getting nasty, and the lack of available alcohol, from a dry keg, had put guests, who forked over five precious dollars for a cup, into a stir of craziness. And when the rain began everyone seemed to be upset. They would not only have to worry about walking home in the rain, but now could no longer linger outside to smoke. “I guess there’s really only one thing we can do,” said Hunter S. Thompson, resting a cigarette from his lips, “drink more!” Hans Solo and Ranger Rick stood behind the journalist in short shorts, carrying a full keg.
By the time it started raining even more heavily, the guests of the party, and myself included, had really started to feel the effects of the alcohol. Bantering, heckling, and flirtation were the main topics of conversation when I arrived in the new main location of smoking, the attic. A space divided between writing (that’s my office, dude, Brian slurred when he gave me the house tour) and two couches so tattered they must have been from off the street. Little room was available, but I had found a spot near the couches.
“Excuse me,” I said to this brunette dolefully seated next to a masked bandit and that lackluster Ninja Tutrtle, Donatello, bantering politics, “but do you think there is room for one more?” Her costume to me was nothing to point out directly: a strapless Leopard print dress (“it’s vintage, actually”) with ridiculously onerous black gloves caressing her elbows (“found them near my neighbors”) and these red high heals (“not quite sure whose these are, to be honest”)
She took a drag off a cig and nodded. I turned around coolly, ended up dribbling my beer all over her heals, and still managed to fumble while attempting to sit down.
Eventually she said, “What the hell are you supposed to be?”
And I said, “To be honest, I have no clue.” “Well, to me,” she said, reaching for a stranded cup to ash, “you look like a man dressed up in a suit with an umbrella.”
I sort of chuckle, shake her hand and say, “I’m Michael.”
And then she shakes my hand and she says, “I’m Riley.” For the rest of the party we talked heavily, mostly in a drunken state: how I had just moved here from the Northeast, how she wants to join the Peace Core, and most importantly, how we both felt deeply attracted to one another, and wouldn’t mind spending the night with each other.
“I chose Mike that night,” Riley would tell her friends after having a couple drinks at the bar, “because he had an umbrella and I didn’t want to get wet on my walk home.” Her friends would laugh.
“What’s nice about an umbrella,” she said to me at the party right before we were about to leave, “is that it can’t keep you away from the unwanted obstacles in life, just dry from one of them. Rain isn’t just water, it is one being that gives vitality to so much, but is avoided by so many, and when you have this umbrella you can defy God, or whatever may be, and you don’t have to be constrained to an attic, or a basement with a dancing Banana.” She took my hand and opened the door to the front porch. “You see out here there are no dancing bananas or drunken ninjas – it’s just us, the rain, and this umbrella.” We walked back to her apartment, and when we first walked in we didn’t worry about wiping our shoes off. Riley led me to her bedroom, a cozy and finely decorated room with an assortment of religious icons, and red tapestries.
“I feel like I’m in a brothel in India,” I said after she turned on a lamp near the bed. Her glaring eyes penetrated deep into my thoughts and past my horrible sense of humor. “Are you saying I am an Indian whore?”
“No, no, no,” I said, desperately, “it’s just that-“ She smiled and threw those monstrous gloves at me, and began to undress while I sat on her bed. I had no idea whether to undress myself, also, or to just stay where I was. I chose the latter for shear hope that she would be the one to take them off of me. She had a hard time taking off her dress.
“I have no idea how I could possibly have zipped it up, but now cannot unzip it,” she said with her arms flailing behind her back.
I finally got the clue and walked over and unzipped the zipper for her. Her dress fell to the ground. When she bent over to pick it up to put it on a hanger I noticed a tattoo on the side of her torso. “Is that an E.E. Cummings poem?” I asked.
1(a
le
af
fa
ll
s)
one
l
iness
She nodded and walked over to her bed. I thought of Riley as that lonely leaf falling slowly towards the ground each autumn. She would hold on to the branch just as I held the umbrella, and just as Grandpa Williams had held my arms: with grace, fear, and elegance.